Poetry:
Poems, 1893 (includes “The Hound of Heaven”)
Sister Songs, 1895
New Poems, 1897
Nonfiction:
Health and Holiness: A Study of the Relations Between Brother Ass the Body and His Rider the Soul, 1905
Shelley, 1909
Saint Ignatius Loyola, 1909
The Life and Labours of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, 1923
Francis Thompson, Literary Criticisms: Newly Discovered and Collected, 1948 (T. L. Connolly, editor)
The Letters of Francis Thompson, 1969 (John Walsh, editor)
Miscellaneous:
The Works of Francis Thompson, 1913 (3 volumes; Wilfred Meynell, editor)
Francis Thompson, the son of a homeopathist, was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith and educated at Ushaw College in preparation for becoming a priest. At the age of seventeen, in accordance with his father’s desire, he began to study medicine at Owens College, Manchester. A frail and timid young man, he found medical study repugnant. After six years he gave up the attempt to become a physician and went to London, where he became addicted to opium and sank into the direst poverty. For a time he earned his living selling matches and newspapers. In the spring of 1888 he sent two poems to Wilfred Meynell, the editor of Merrie England, who accepted them for publication. With Meynell and his wife, Alice, as his patrons and supporters, the poet tried to break the opium habit.
Thompson’s first volume of poetry, simply titled Poems, contained “The Hound of Heaven,” a poem that despite its strict Catholic dogma became immediately popular. The poem recounts God’s pursuit of the speaker, who is ultimately saved from despair. In addition to Catholic mysticism, which informs particularly his early works, Thompson was tremendously influenced by the English Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century. Thompson produced few works, and he probably never lived up to his potential. He was never able to break his addiction to opium. He died of tuberculosis on November 13, 1907, and was buried under his own epitaph: “Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.”